In the library Mr. Mac Quedy was expounding political economy to
the Reverend Doctor Folliott, who was pro more demolishing its
doctrines seriatim.

Mr. Chainmail was in hot dispute with Mr. Skionar, touching the
physical and moral well-being of man. Mr. Skionar was enforcing
his friend Mr. Shantsee's views of moral discipline; maintaining
that the sole thing needful for man in this world was loyal and
pious education; the giving men good books to read, and enough of
the hornbook to read them; with a judicious interspersion of the
lessons of Old Restraint, which was his poetic name for the parish
stocks. Mr. Chainmail, on the other hand, stood up for the
exclusive necessity of beef and ale, lodging and raiment, wife and
children, courage to fight for them all, and armour wherewith to do
so.

Mr. Henbane had got his face scratched, and his finger bitten, by
the cat, in trying to catch her for a second experiment in killing
and bringing to life; and Doctor Morbific was comforting him with a
disquisition to prove that there were only four animals having the
power to communicate hydrophobia, of which the cat was one; and
that it was not necessary that the animal should be in a rabid
state, the nature of the wound being everything, and the idea of
contagion a delusion. Mr. Henbane was listening very lugubriously
to this dissertation.

Mr. Philpot had seized on Mr. Firedamp, and pinned him down to a
map of Africa, on which he was tracing imaginary courses of mighty
inland rivers, terminating in lakes and marshes, where they were
finally evaporated by the heat of the sun; and Mr. Firedamp's hair